Animoca data: the top Android phones in key Asian markets for July 2012
BusinessInsider recently published a chart showing that Samsung sales of smartphones in the US are surprisingly low, and speculated that Samsung ”must be cleaning up abroad.” We checked our data for key Asian markets for the month of July 2012, and we can confirm that Samsung is indeed cleaning up in the region – big time, as this infographic will show.

The graphic is based on usage data on the Animoca Android network (which is described here). In the interest of expediting these results we focused on key smartphone markets in Asia rather than a comprehensive regional listing. The results show the most widespread phones among Animoca users in the 7 main Asian markets. We added an “unidentified device” category for India and China, where we found a lot of unknown devices or models made by lesser-known brands, clone phones, etc.
Once again, Samsung is the name that pops out at first sight: the company from South Korea absolutely rules the Android smartphone market in every territory we analyzed, with the exception of Japan. In Japan, Sony’s Xperia Acro series is the most popular model among Animoca users, although a Samsung device does hold second place four percentage points behind the Sony.
High vs. low end
It is especially interesting to look at how low and high-end devices are distributed in different countries. The affluent Hong Kong and Singapore, which have the world’s highest rates of smartphone penetration, display an overwhelming consumer preference for high-end devices. In both markets, the relatively recent Samsung Galaxy S III has already claimed roughly 16 percent of users, indicating remarkably rapid adoption. In fact, high-end devices are common in every country except one: in India, a fast-growing market, devices from the lower end of the spectrum are the most used. In Japan, on the other hand, there are no low-end devices at all among the top 5 most popular phones.
Battlefield: China
The world’s largest and fastest growing smartphone market, China, is the critical smartphone battleground of the near future. Unlike other key markets in which we see dominant smartphone models holding commanding leads over every other handset, in China the race is extremely close, with only one percentage point separating the Samsung Galaxy SII from the runner-up Samsung Galaxy Note. The next smallest difference between first and second place in our sample of Asian markets is four times as large, in Japan, where 4.1 percentage points separate the market-leading Sony Xperia Acro from the Samsung Galaxy SII.
In fact, we’ll close with a table showing the market share difference between the number 1 and number 5 phone for each territory, a powerful demonstration that the race is on in China.
Difference in market share between number 1 and 5 phones
And that’s all for this update, enjoy the data and the week-end!
#data #Android #Asian #market #China #Korea #Japan #India #Taiwan #HongKong #Singapore